Speeding Windows Vista Startup

Do you find your Windows Vista boot time slowing you down? In this analysis of techniques for speeding Windows Vista boot times, Ed Tittel shows you how to tweak a single startup setting to get you back to work fast. Sometimes, the most impressive performance gains come from the simplest actions.

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Sometimes, the most impressive
performance gains come from the simplest actions. In this analysis of techniques
for speeding Windows Vista boot times, the biggest individual gain usually comes
from tweaking a single startup setting—namely, the boot screen timeout
setting easily available through the Vista System Configuration
utility.

Check the System Configuration Settings

Here’s how to check—and change—this setting:

From an administrative login or account, type
msconfig.exe into the Vista Start menu search box. This launches the Vista System
Configuration utility (see Figure 1).

Notice the timeout entry
highlighted in blue at the center right. By default, Vista sets this value to 30
seconds, which means the system waits 30 seconds for you to choose which
operating system to boot even when there’s only one option
available.

Reset this value to 5 or 10
depending on how nimble-fingered (and -witted) you are. You’ll need to act
fast when booting Vista if you ever want to invoke a different boot option. I
usually set it to 10 on my systems.

That’s all there is to
it. Congratulations! Depending on which value you select, you’ve either
shaved 25 (5) or 20 (10) seconds off your previous Windows Vista boot
time.

Frankly, this is as easy as it
gets when speeding the Vista boot time. All the other options we’re about
to explore seldom deliver this much improvement (though in extreme cases,
resulting improvements will shave an even greater number of seconds off the
usual boot time), and all require more work.